Thank you for the critique. My post and thoughts were made under the assumption of what would take place here in Texas under Texas law and the use of the Standard Field Sobriety testing here currently implemented in Texas. However, you are correct in informing me that a reader might not be aware of those assumptions made in my post. So I thank you for alerting me to those needed changes in my post.

No one ever gets charged with suspicion of DWI. This is nothing but cop talk.

“if he was in fact not driving the State can not charge him with DWI.”

Really? I have had a lot of clients who claimed not to have been driving get charged with DWI. They can and will charge him. Whether they can ultimately get a conviction is something entirely different.

“to illustrate that you had lost your normal physical and/or mental abilities to operate a motor vehicle by introduction of alcohol and/or drugs.”

Nowhere does the DWI statute require the State to show that a person “lost” anything. Same thing for “abilities to operate a motor vehicle.” Those words do not appear in the DWI statute.

“Turner was wise to refuse to perform any more SFSTs….”

Mr. Turner was never asked to perform SFSTs — Though SFSTs did exist in a few places when this video was made in 1984, what he was asked to perform were not SFSTs.

“Mr. Turner was wise to refuse to . . . submit to a breath test.”

You cannot possibly know whether he was wise to decline a breath test without knowing the law in Broward County (Florida, not Texas) in 1984. Some States make refusal a crime. If it was a crime, then such advice would have been unlawful and unethical.

You need to take a bit more time to be a bit more accurate, precise and careful if you are going to comment on DWI issues in ways that some people might take as being authoritative.

Cynthia,

This is so true and I imagine that there would be no video of the incident as well!

Besides that, the cop lied about the defendant’s car weaving (it did not) and about the fact that the defendant warned them that his balance was impaired from recent inner ear surgery. We acquitted him and I fleetingly thought about referring the license of the prosecutor to the State Bar for putting two liars on the stand. I didn’t because I figured she was just too stupid to look at the videos before she tried the case and showed them. I made sure to tell her what I thought when she came back to talk to the jury that had just poured her out.